


The Last Job You'll Ever Take

by not_mom



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Actual productive uses of necromancy, But like just touched on, Canon-Typical Violence, Coroner, Gen, How do new reapers get recruited you ask?, Kravitz at work, Leeman Kessler, Necromancy, Nothing explicit, Police, Reapers, Set during Murder on the Rockport Limited, TAZ Balance, The Adventure Zone: Balance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 19:31:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13910679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_mom/pseuds/not_mom
Summary: Kravitz isn't the only reaper that the Raven Queen has in her retinue. The hiring process is different for everyone, of course- sometimes a prospective reaper gets hired when they're still alive.Or: what should have been a normal day for a Raven Queen worshiping police necromancer gets weird when she meets the grim reaper, gets called out, then accepts a job offer.





	The Last Job You'll Ever Take

Molly Elkohar considered herself a devout woman. Raised in the tradition of the Raven Queen, the cycle of life and death was as familiar to her as breathing; at times, it was almost more natural. The rhythm of it permeated every facet of life: in the cry of a newborn, in the last exhale of a dying man. It was in the change of the seasons and in the steady wearing down of the soles of boots and in the smell of freshly baked bread. Not to be dramatic, but it was everything. An intrinsic part of existing and the greatest cause imaginable to devote her life to. Although not technically a cleric, she knew she looked the part- she spent her days draped in the dark blues and raven feathers of her Queen, and not many people knew how to react to such an outwardly devout woman. With awkwardness, usually, or thinly-veiled hostility if they knew they'd done something _wrong_.

It tended to shock people that she worked as a necromancer.

In the very loosest sense of the word, that was accurate. She brought the dead back to life without their consent, bypassing traditional resurrection rites so that she could talk to them. But it was for a good cause- yes, her reasoning sounded the same as the refrain of every necromancer ever condemned by her goddess- because she worked in setting the dead to rest. She was employed by the Neverwinter police force as a special consultant who specialized in murder cases: her days were spent asking the victims what had happened to them, her nights spent doing what she could for their unfinished business. It was an unusual sort of worship, she'd grant, but there was nothing wrong in setting the dead to rest. Nobody ever stayed. The laws of life and death were treated with the utmost respect, as were those she worked on. And it had been decades now, decades in which her Queen could have sent some sign of disapproval, but none had come. So she'd carried on, praying twice daily and using her power only to help the victims of the crimes she worked on move on.

Even now, fifty years since she'd been hired and forty-nine since she'd started campaigning for better facilities, the morgue wasn't well-lit. The official story, of course, was that a half-elf didn't need good light to function if she could see in the dark. The sad reality was that there just wasn't the money for a proper morgue. The dead only lingered for a short period before being buried, and the small basement space was still good enough to do its job. Was still good enough for her to do her job. Her one and only victory dominated the back wall of the room, the fruit of a hard-won argument on proper corpse management and a compromise down from proper drawer units built into the wall. She had shelves for bodies, the design of which she'd been inflexible on: they were metal, large enough that she could tuck what proper funeral trappings she could manage around corpses while they waited, sturdy enough that she never had to fear some kind of collapse (that had happened her first month, before the new shelves, and she'd been equal parts embarrassed with herself and furious at the previous coroner), and designed in such a way that each body could be tucked behind its own curtain. That much respect, at least, she could give them. The rest of the room, unfortunately, showed its age in less than graceful ways.

The table where most of her work took place had a wobbly leg supported by an outdated conduct handbook. The floor's flagstones were stained with decades of blood and viscera and other unpleasant bodily fluids, and wouldn't come clean no matter how much magic or elbow grease she threw at it. Her notes were locked in a battered cabinet with suspicious scorch marks down one side. The only light came from whatever lanterns she could hang in the two whole sconces in the room, so over the years she'd ended up with candles wherever she could put them and more candle wax than she could really dispose of.

On the upside, though, the room unsettled people enough that she was usually left alone to work. She could go days without any visitors- even incredibly urgent cases usually weren't enough to tempt Neverwinter's best and brightest detectives into her domain- and she liked it that way.

Which was why she jumped about a foot in the air when she heard the air displace itself behind her and an unfamiliar voice with a thick accent speak up.

"Molly Solana Elkohar. Now, what are we going to do with you?"

She whirled, and found herself facing a man in the doorway. A man with dark hair and gold eyes, clad in a dark suit that gave her the impression of feathers when he shifted, peering around the room with polite interest. He didn't look like much of a threat, in all honesty- his hands were in full view and clearly empty, and his posture was too relaxed for him to be looking to pick a fight. He was handsome, too. Model handsome. Noble handsome.

Unnerved anyways, she took a step back and slammed her hip into the work table's edge. She hissed in pain, looking up at him while trying (and failing) to make eye contact for a long twenty seconds before she could muster up a reply.

"Do with me?"

"Yes." He smiled, and she blinked to try to reset her vision because it seemed to be clouding up; when she opened her eyes he'd halved the distance between them and was holding a squat candle out to her in one hand, its wick dancing with a deep blue light. Despite her mounting horror, she registered that he'd plucked it from atop the filing cabinet behind him. "Today's fifty years you've been doing this. Two thousand, six hundred, and seventy three souls you've spoken with. And exactly zero cases where the deceased failed to return to death after their statement was taken. I think that deserves a celebration, don't you?"

Molly may have dealt with Neverwinter's most horrific murders and had nerves of steel when it came to corpses, but the pleasant smile on his face and her growing certainty in who she was speaking with turned her knees to water and stole the air from her lungs: she dropped to her knees, never minding the mess, and bowed her head. She knew better than to even appear to fuck with the grim reaper, after all, especially considering how she walked the fine line between reverence and heresy. She couldn't have brought herself to remain standing, anyway, overcome. "Sir," she began, "emissary of my Lady-"

"That's about enough of that, I think." He cut her off, startling her into glancing up for a moment- he'd set the candle down beside the half-examined corpse, and was pressing down on the corner of the table as if to test its stability. She watched a frown flit across his face as it wobbled. "You're not about to be reaped, get up."

"I'm not?" It came out quietly as she got slowly to her feet, keeping her gaze trained on the ground. The grim reaper didn't just visit people who hadn't done anything wrong, after all. Was this a warning? It had to be a warning, she decided, quietly gesturing down at her robes to wash the grime away. Which was fair, she'd spent half a century waiting for one. No reason to get worked up now that it was about to come. She could just... resign. Find something else to do. The thought sent a chill through her that had absolutely nothing to do with how cool the room was, and she found her hands balling into loose fists.

"Nah. You're a unique case, is what you are." Seemingly satisfied with the relative stability of the table, he turned to face her, leaning against it. "See, you're raising the dead which is definitely a no-no, but you quite clearly serve the Raven Queen and you haven't done any lasting damage." He sighed through his nose, by the sound of it. "You can look at me, you know. I won't bite." He didn't continue until she'd dragged her gaze up to focus in on his mouth, watching him form words as he continued on. She would have expected someone whose physical body was a mere construct to not bother with the little details, but his lips appeared to be slightly chapped and she couldn't quite get past that. The grim reaper had chapped lips?

"-and you're not listening to me, are you?" She snapped back to the present moment when he raised the volume of his voice, a note of irritation slipping into his tone. "Look, you're not in trouble now, but take care you don't do anything for personal profit, okay?"

"Of course not!" She drew back, nearly offended, hands clasped in front of her chest. He sighed. In an rustle of motion, the grim reaper straightened up, robes flaring in an appropriately dramatic fashion behind him. The brief flash of confidence gone, Molly shrunk back below his gaze. He seemed to be peering into her soul, and she felt stripped bare. Molly Elkohar, you have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting.

"Of course not?" He echoed her with a faint shake of his head, lips twisting into something wry. "You'd never be so selfish as to bring someone back for just a few minutes, someone who wasn't murdered? You'd never do something so selfish as to give your half-brother a proper goodbye? You wouldn't?"

Fuck.

"I- that was-" She floundered, looking for something to say, but came up blank. Nothing. Raising Damien had been nothing but selfish on her end, nothing but a direct and flagrant violation of the rules, and that was indefensible.

"Exactly. I've come to offer you a deal." He tipped his head sideways to watch her, and Molly felt herself break out in goosebumps as every candle in the room stopped flickering, the light suddenly going steady and faintly blue. The air felt charged, swollen and heavy with something monumental about to happen. "You, Molly Solana Elkohar, you will swear your afterlife to the Raven Queen upon your death. You will take up the mantle of reaper and assist mortals in their natural deaths. You will guide them to the astral plane, leaving me free to focus on bounties- threats to the natural order as it exists." She blinked, suddenly unable to form a coherent thought, much less a visible answer, and he held a finger up to her, candles flaring then burning low, plunging the room into a deep shadow. "If you do not accept," he continued, "you will be subject to whatever punishment my Queen thinks is fitting upon your death. While I recognize the... nobility of your work, and see the good intentions behind it, and certainly appreciate all the ghosts you've prevented from manifesting, we can't just let people bend the rules creatively."

As soon as he lowered his hand, Molly found her voice. "I accept. Gods, yes, I- thank you." It took a monumental effort to stay standing, but the grim reaper smiled, and the tension was immediately gone from the room.

She felt lightheaded, and her left wrist was burning. After a beat of the grim reaper just watching her, she dared to look down and push her sleeve up enough to get a good look at her wrist. Nothing had changed- the skin was still smooth and pale, veins green-blue through her skin. She still scowled suspiciously at it, then shook the sleeve back into place.

"Shake on it?" If she didn't know better, Molly would have said that he looked amused. There was something about the way he seemed to be biting down a smile that she didn't quite trust, but it spoke more of mischief than ill will, so she let out a breath through her nose then took his extended hand. As soon as they touched, the pain in her wrist exploded for a single, intense second, burning white-hot. It took all her strength- and the grim reaper tightening his grip on her hand, other hand cupping her other elbow- to keep her upright. The sensation was gone in a second, pain fading as if it had never existed, but as soon as she had her wits about her she yanked back.

"What was that!" It didn't feel like anything had changed. She felt just like she always did, but that hadn't been nothing, and the grim reaper looked far too calm for her taste. He only motioned to her wrist, and Molly realized that she was clutching it protectively to her chest. Slowly, she loosened her grip, rolling the sleeve up again. There, stark black against her skin, was a small raven. The tattoo made it look like the bird was perched on her skin, clinging to the big tendon down the center of her wrist like it was a tree branch. Slowly, she flexed then relaxed her wrist, watching as the symbol stayed perfectly shaped, refusing to distort the way a real tattoo should have. She knew what it was, of course. A mark of the Raven Queen, a symbol that at once marked her as one of the goddess' chosen and symbolized the pact that she'd made. Again, overwhelmed, she found her eyes had filled with tears when she looked back up to the grim reaper, whispering a thank-you.

"Welcome to the flock. We'll look forward to your arrival." For the first time, his tone was kind. He sounded genuinely pleased that she'd agreed, and he offered a handkerchief with a smile. "Not that you should hurry, of course. I can manage for another century." When she took the square of cloth to dab at her eyes, Molly couldn't help but notice the tiny feather embroidered in the corner, and managed a watery chuckle. The grim reaper only laughed, shaking his head. "I've got a theme going."

"I can see that." She hesitated, gripping the handkerchief, but today had been weird enough already. "You know my name, am I going to get to know yours?"

"It's Kravitz." He looked like he was going to say more, but instead stilled. It was uncanny- he seemed more like a sculpture than a 'living' being, and she was just beginning to wonder if something had gone wrong when Kravitz straightened up, movement abruptly there, as if he'd flipped a switch. "Look, I've got to go, but I'll see you later. Someone thought that it was a good idea to fuck with magic jars, should be an interesting one." He took a step back, snapped and pretended to shoot her with a finger gun, then dropped the hand to catch a scythe that had just materialized. Somehow, as he turned on his heel, the formal suit melted into a dark robe. In a flash of his blade, Kravitz was gone.

Well then. Molly couldn't help a smile, born mostly out of relief, as she turned back to the table to take stock of the corpse before her. A John Doe, half-elf. Approximately thirty-five years of age, found in Rockport in a hotel room booked under an assumed name- there was no Leeman Kessler on record in Neverwinter, nor in any of the major surrounding cities. No missing persons report about him. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. This was a favor to the Rockport guard, and the last thing she wanted to do was flub the interview.

By now, the ritual was a familiar one. Molly moved quietly around the room, movements graceful after the years of practice. Sprinkle the body with the ashes of a few assorted feathers and herbs, burn incense, trace a sigil over them in the smoke, place a good coin under their tongue. There was something almost soothing about performing it, about going through the steps and chanting the celestial and feeling the magic build and take root.

With a gasp, Leeman Kessler blinked awake, jerking up into a sitting position. The metal bracer on his arm clacked against the table as he moved, and Molly watched him tap it before she spoke up.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. Tell me, do you remember how you died?"

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a conversation on the TFW discord about how there's got to be a police department somewhere in Faerûn that uses necromancer to just. Ask murder victims who killed them. Many thanks to the WDA squad for reading over the draft and telling me that this didn't suck.  
> Hope y'all enjoyed!


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